Art Thieves Strike in Belgium but Take Fake van Gogh Drawing

Despite the fact it is nearly impossible to sell stolen art—witness the frenzy over the last few days about the rather old news that Romanian art thieves might have burned stolen works to cover their tracks—vandals continue to target security-deficient regional museums like the one in Brussels hit last weekend:

Ten paintings and two drawings were nimbly stolen in the course of two minutes, according to representatives at the Van Buuren Museum, on the outskirts of Brussels.

“All alarms went off, but they [the thieves] were particularly fast, everything was done in two minutes,” said curator Isabelle Anspach.

Several of the works were said to have been of great value, including ‘The Thinker’ by Dutch painter Kees van Dongen, said to have a replacement value of 1.2 million Euros.

The thieves are unlikely to have known, however, when they chose the drawing near the stairs, Peasant Woman Pealing Potatoes, that although labelled Van Gogh it is believed to be a fake./blockquote>